eMail Receipt Confirmation

[thorvalde]

Anybody know of a good freeware program that will
confirm when an email I have sent, is opened by the
recipient? I'm using Outlook Express.
I've tried "MSGTag" but I'm unable to get it to
work properly.

Thanks.

Ken.

 

[Onno Tasler]

thorvalde scribebat:

Anybody know of a good freeware program that will confirm when an
email I have sent, is opened by the recipient?

How should such a program work? It would need to be connected to your
recipients brain (or at least his e-mail program) to do this, because
otherwise it cannot know whether the message was read or not.

Outlook Express has an option to ask for a confirmation that the mail
was received/read, but this confirmation is usually not send
automatically. You can switch it on when writing a new mail, it is
somewhere in the menus (third from behind, second from top in my
version; I guess the German names won't help you much)

Even in case you use this, not getting a confirmation does not mean that
the e-mail has not been read - I, for example, always ignore such
requests. (Well, as long as the e-mail is not extremely important I even
ignore the whole e-mail if a confirmation is requested)

 

[mike ring]

Even in case you use this, not getting a confirmation does not mean that
the e-mail has not been read - I, for example, always ignore such
requests. (Well, as long as the e-mail is not extremely important I even
ignore the whole e-mail if a confirmation is requested)

I think it's better not to ignore such requests; I find email is now so
unreliable due to spamtraps every where, and run by most major ISPs that I
feel some confirmation of receipt is needed, even for "HAppy Birthday"

I wish it weren't so :-(

mike

 

[Uncle Buck]

Anybody know of a good freeware program that will
confirm when an email I have sent, is opened by the
recipient? I'm using Outlook Express.

http://www.sentthere.com/

 

[Anonymous Sender]

thorvalde scribebat: snip
Even in case you use this, not getting a confirmation does not mean that
the e-mail has not been read - I, for example, always ignore such
requests. (Well, as long as the e-mail is not extremely important I even
ignore the whole e-mail if a confirmation is requested)

I recently did the right thing & confirmed receipt of an email. The confirmation was bounced
back to me by the original sender's ISP stating that it was considered highly likely to be spam.
The poor bastard's probably torn most of his hair out over the last few weeks wondering why
nobody seems to be getting his emails.

 

[Uncle Buck]

How should such a program work? It would need to be connected to your
recipients brain (or at least his e-mail program) to do this, because
otherwise it cannot know whether the message was read or not.

Who said anything about being "read"? He asked to know if it was OPENED.

 

[Wayne D]

Anybody know of a good freeware program that will
confirm when an email I have sent, is opened by the
recipient? I'm using Outlook Express.
I've tried "MSGTag" but I'm unable to get it to
work properly.

Thanks.

Ken.

Mailinfo:

"Mailinfo allows you to verify that your email messages have actually
been received, and notifies you when the message has been read. The
program seamlessly integrates with Outlook 2000/XP/2003 and lets you
track all or selected emails by simply clicking a button on the toolbar.
It inserts a special tracking image into the message, which also informs
the user about the fact that the delivery has been confirmed, so there
is not secrecy involved that could be misunderstood by the recipient. A
new mail folder in Outlook enables you to review the status of all your
tracked messages, and also provides information about when and where the
message was received. In addition, Mailinfo displays a real-time alert
from the system tray as soon as your message has been read, and also
notifies you of emails that appear to be lost, so you can choose to
follow up. The program is very useful to determine that important emails
actually get through to the recipients and have not been blocked by a
spam filter. "

Requires Outlook 2000/XP/2003

Have not tried it. Let us know if you do.

http://www.snapfiles.com/get/mailinfo.html

http://www.mailinfo.com/web/download/

Regards

Wayne D

 

[Onno Tasler]

Uncle Buck scribebat:

Who said anything about being "read"? He asked to know if it was OPENED.

Yeah, so what? You cannot check that from your computer either. Besides
the recipient, only his e-mail program can know this.

 

[Uncle Buck]

Yeah, so what? You cannot check that from your computer either.

Yes you can, actually. Most apps (like SentThere and MailInfo) can
do it. They work by putting a link to a web image in the mail, so
when the user opens the mail, the link generates a "hit" and the
app knows the mail has been opened. Nothing connected to the
recipient's brain required.

 

[Onno Tasler]

Uncle Buck scribebat:

They work by putting a link to a web image in the mail, so when the
user opens the mail, the link generates a "hit" and the app knows the
mail has been opened.

Does not work when I am reading mails offline. Does not work if my mail
client does not show HTML. Does not work if my mail client does not load
external resources - and most modern e-mail clients, including Outlook
Express, don't do this by default due to security and privacy reasons.

 

[Rahman]

msgtag should work.
it doesn't support hotmail or yahoo but for your isp email it should be ok
111++

 

[BillR]

Uncle Buck scribebat:

Does not work when I am reading mails offline. Does not work if my mail
client does not show HTML. Does not work if my mail client does not load
external resources - and most modern e-mail clients, including Outlook
Express, don't do this by default due to security and privacy reasons.

But mailinfo plus return receipt requested are the best you can do
outside of a controlled corporate network or an integrated workflow
application. If you and your recipient are in agreement about the
need for a response, then at least the mailinfo image is explicit.

Have you considered a request to reply/confirm?

BillR

Site Excerpt
------------
Can it be that a message was viewed and yet mailinfo tells me that
"delivery of this message is not yet confirmed"?

Yes. This may happen in several situations, including:
The recipient is using "Mailinfo Confirmation Blocker".
The recipient read the message while being offline.
The recipient reads his messages in a plain text mode.
The recipient is using an email client that does not accept HTML or
does not fully display HTML content or images.
For example, Microsoft Outlook 2003® allows users to view HTML
messages without related images.
You have set the Advanced Setting "Do not confirm delivery if a
message is viewed for less than X seconds" such that the recipient may
have viewed the message for a shorter period of time than the minimum
required by the setting.

 

[Derald]

Anybody know of a good freeware program that will
confirm when an email I have sent, is opened by the
recipient?

Thank goodness, at present, there exists no way of determining that
fact.

 

[Derald]

hey work by putting a link to a web image in the mail, so
when the user opens the mail, the link generates a "hit" and the
app knows the mail has been opened.

Excuse me? Sorry, pal, but that's just stupid. Any link to any
image shows up as exactly that in any well-behaved mail client and it is
entirely up to the recipient whether he follows the link. IMO, only
damned fools do so.

 

[rjeremy]

http://www.sentthere.com/

Adware according to the EULA

"The Software contains features that may link you or provide you with
certain reference and functionality to third parties’ websites,
directories, servers or services (“Third Party Services”)."

Just say no to adware.

tim

 

[Uncle Buck]

Excuse me? Sorry, pal, but that's just stupid. Any link to any
image shows up as exactly that in any well-behaved mail client and it
is entirely up to the recipient whether he follows the link.

Do you actually even know what you're talking about? Who said anything
about the recipient clicking the link? It's an embedded link to an
external image, with no clicking required. The mail is HTML. Have
you even seen such apps at work? There's at least 3 apps that I've
tested (SentThere, MailInfo, HaveTheyReadItYet) that do it, and they
all work quite well. But hey, maybe these 3 apps are just fake and
don't really work at all, eh?

I've got an idea: tell me what you consider to be a "well-behaved
mail client" and I'll test it with these apps.

 

[Uncle Buck]

Thank goodness, at present, there exists no way of determining that
fact.

Wrong. See my other post in this thread.

 

[Uncle Buck]

I've got an idea: tell me what you consider to be a "well-behaved
mail client" and I'll test it with these apps.

BTW, make sure it's a free app, I'm not buying Office 2003 just to
test this.

 

[derek / nul]

Excuse me? Sorry, pal, but that's just stupid.

Not if the email is in HTML format, it will work as intended.
Normal spammer trick, that why I read all emails in text only.

 

[Uncle Buck]

Not if the email is in HTML format, it will work as intended.
Normal spammer trick, that why I read all emails in text only.

And that's also why Yahoo Mail lets you block images in mail.